The present invention comprises apparatus for interfacing the spindle motor in a disc drive to control circuitry mounted external to the disc drive casing. Additionally, the inventive apparatus is intended to aid in maintaining the integrity of the clean room environment surrounding selected disc drive components which are located internal to the head disc assembly housing. Disc drive units in general are well known for use in modern microcomputers such as personal and desktop and personal notebook computers. In the most typical form, such disc drive units comprise a so-called Winchester disc drive having one or more rotatably driven memory storage discs mounted within a substantially sealed disc drive housing along with one or more related electromagnetic heads for reading and writing data on surfaces of the disc. A disc drive unit of this type, typically referred to as a hard or fixed disc, is normally available as a compact package including the sealed housing together with an external circuit board carrying the necessary drive electronics for controlling the rotation of the motor driving the discs and for controlling reading and writing data from the surface of the discs through the magnetic heads.
In this regard, the disc drive unit requires a power connector plug for supplying electrical power to the drive electronics on the circuit board, together with appropriate connector fittings for coupling the drive electronics with a suitable spindle motor for controlled rotational driving of the memory storage disc. Further, one or more interface connectors are normally provided for coupling the drive electronics to a computer system which supplies appropriate commands and data to the disc drive unit for reading and/or writing data.
In the past, assembly of a fixed disc drive unit in combination with the associated circuit board and the drive electronics thereon has been a relatively time consuming and labor intensive task, requiring considerable attention. More particularly, as one example, the spindle motor for the disc drive unit is commonly mounted within the substantially sealed disc drive housing, and is designed for multi-phase operations; thus a group of spindle motor leads must be individually connected by soldering or the like, to the drive electronics on the circuit board. These spindle motor leads protrude from the motor, typically at the underside thereof, and are normally soldered to respective terminals of a connector fitting adapted for plug-in engagement with a mating fitting on the circuit board.
Alternatively, in other cases, the spindle motor leads may be soldered to a multi-conductor cable which is coupled in turn to an associated connector fitting. In either case, however, connection of the spindle motor leads to the drive electronics required intensive manual effort, resulting in relatively slow and costly assembly of the disc drive units.
There have been previous efforts made to simplify this assembly process, as found in Bucknam U.S. Pat. No. 4,923,406. This patent discloses, as shown in FIG. 1, a cable leading from the underside of the housing to a connector to the drive electronics. The associated cable is designed to facilitate quick connections. However, in this case, all the spindle motor leads are brought outside the disc drive housing, and considerable manual labor is required.
There exists a significant need for improved apparatus and method for coupling the spindle motor leads of the disc drive to the associated drive electronics, wherein the improved method and apparatus provide for faster assembly of a disc drive unit by use of methods conducive to an automated assembly process.